Last year marked the first ever Sounds Of The Underground tour, bringing together the world's finest metal and hardcore acts together to tour across the U.S. and Canada. This summer, bands such as Terror, In Flames, As I Lay Dying, and Through The Eyes Of The Dead will embark upon the 2nd annual Sounds Of The Underground tour. We decided to interview one of the organizers of the event, Paul Conroy, to glean some more details.
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Hi Paul, how are you doing these days?
I am real good. Super busy with Ferret, Unearth and Sounds of the Underground but it's all good stuff. Thanks for setting up this interview.
So, just to begin with the usual questions, can you tell us, Paul how you got hooked up working at Ferret Music, what was the story behind that? What is your main job there? President, manager?
I am a partner at Ferret Music with Carl Severson. Carl and I have been friends for a long-time. I managed Every Time I Die during their “Hot Damn” album cycle and during that time we realized it would be a good idea if we could find a way for us to work on more projects together. Then one night after eating a shitload of seafood and drinking a shitload of beer it was determined that me joining forces with Ferret would be a great thing.
So how did the entire Sounds Of The Underground tour idea start?
The whole idea started from a conversation I had with tour partner Tim Borror. Tim is a booking agent and a bud as well. We worked on Lamb of God together for a while. It was really his idea. We had a bunch of our bands on Ozzfest in 2004. Bands are not allowed to play Ozzfest in consecutive years so we had a ton of our bands without a big tour for last summer because they were too heavy for Warped tour and could not repeat on Ozzfest. It was his idea that we take matters into our own hands and put something together. I mentioned this idea to Carl and he loved it. We then approached Larry Mazer with the idea. Larry's been in this business a long time and he understands what kind of production goes into a tour like this. Larry was instantly into the idea as well. The last piece of the puzzle was getting House of Blues on board as our partners. House of Blues understand the promotion aspect of a tour like ours and it was important to have their expertise as well so we did everything the right way.
How did the debut of the Sounds Of The Underground tour do last year? Did you feel the work paid off? Good experience?
The tour did great last year. It was such an incredible experience. I was on the road with the tour for about three weeks and it was a definite career highlight. It was such an amazing vibe with all of the bands and the crew and I think that vibe translated to all of the people that attended the show. The most important things that came out of last years tour is that the promoters wanted us to do a second year, all of the bands had a great time on our tour and our website was flooded with positive feedback from the attendees.
Is there any positive or negative aspects of last years tour you can tell us about? Anything crazy or out of the ordinary that occurred last year you can talk to us about?
The positive aspects of our tour is that you would have bands as diverse as Madball, Clutch, Lamb of God and Opeth all hanging out together. No bullshit about what scene you are from and what kind of music you play. Furthermore, the opening bands were treated with the same amount of respect as the headliner. It was not unlikely for Randy from Lamb of God to jump on stage to sing a song with A Life Once Lost when they opened the show. Total family vibe.
One of the most amazing moments of last summer happened in Texas when members of Lamb of God, Clutch and Opeth had a late night jam session in the parking lot. Some of the best players you've ever seen jamming for hours. It was killer.
Looking at the organization, how much work do you think you and your colleagues have put into this type of event?
Without a doubt, this requires more work then anything I've ever done. Between Ferret, Tim Borror's crew at the Agency Group, Larry Mazer at Entertainment Services, and our partners in House of Blues, there are at least a dozen people working on the tour at this moment.
Can you talk to us about how many people showed up last year the biggest date and smallest date? What cities you believed were the best dates?
The biggest date was New Jersey, which had damn near 6,000 people there. It was insane. The smallest date was in Virginia, which had under 3,000 people there. We played near the beach in Virginia on July 4th weekend. Wasn't so great from a timing perspective.
The Corpus Christi date was one of my personal favorite dates. The ticket counts were low heading into the date so I was nervous about it but the day of the show we had a shitload of people walk up. The weather was amazing and everyone had an incredible time.
Another personal highlight was the Philly show. I grew up in Philly and have done many shows there with Lamb of God, Unearth, Every Time I Die, etc. Most of these shows were with a promoter named Jon Hampton who is also a good bud. It was real cool to go from putting together a show with Jon that had 1,000 kids there to putting on a show with Jon that had 5,000 kids there. A proud moment for sure.
How many people do you guys usually hire to be on this tour to set up all the stuff like stage, sound, catering etc?
We hire a bunch of people to set-up the tour. I am going to roughly guess that we have 30 people that travel with us handling all that needs to go down on the tour. Then you have the bands, their crew, the vendors, etc. it's quite a production out there.
This year we see a reduction in bands but also see a more widely recognized line up what triggered you to do this?
One of the main reasons for scaling back the line-up is that we knew that we had a few special guests that wanted to get down with our program on select dates. We wanted to make sure we had room for the special guests on the bill. Also, our tour was br00tal (that's how I need to say that on Lambgoat, right? I spend far too much time reading your message boards) on our crew. I mean their days were grueling. By scaling back a bit, we'll be creating less stress on the crew.
Can you tell us your thoughts or expectations on this years SOTU?
I expect this years tour to kick almighty ass! Our line-up is killer and like last year, I know most of the bands personally and expect nothing but great vibes back-stage and with the crowd as well. I also expect not to sleep much, not to shower much, drink beer and eat far too many cheeseburgers in the Jagermeister tent area.
Can we expect any surprise bands or special additions to some of the SOTU dates this year?
Oh yes, we have our friends in Killswitch Engage playing the Boston show. We have Shadows Fall, It Dies Today and Still Remains playing San Diego and Phoenix. We also have two more special guests playing two more shows, which I cannot announce yet. However, these special guests will definitely be exciting to those that love hardcore.
What can you tell us about this year's line up? How did you decide it?
This year's line-up is probably heavier then last years. We really try to represent both metal and hardcore with our tour. Thus you have a band like Behemoth mixed with a band like Terror as well too. Regarding the decision making process, we spend months debating on bands and have a list of bands several miles long. The process in general terms is based upon our trying to get the most exciting bands while pulling from all different scenes. I think any tour that can have a band like As I Lay Dying playing the same stage with a Cannibal Corpse, Terror and a Gwar says a lot for diversity.
Can you tell us some of the sponsors on this year's tour and how they are involved?
We have a ton of sponsors on board for this year. Check out our website for a full list. We have some returning from last year like our friends at Music Choice, Hot Topic and Jager then we have some new sponsors like our buds at Eulogy Records, and of course Lambgoat (will your message board explode with people hating on you?).
Can we expect this year to be even better than last year? What in your opinion makes this year SOTU stronger than ever?
Oh it will be even better then last year for sure. I think the diversity of our line-up this year and the strength of each band makes it huge. We have the As I Lay Dying, which is one of the few metal bands that is crossing over into the Warped audience. The band is flat out huge now. We have the leaders in the European Metal scene with In Flames. Their headline tour of the States a couple of months back was massive. Trivium, without a doubt, will be one of the biggest names in metal by this time next year. Love em or hate em (I personally love em), you cannot deny that this band will be huge. We have the kings of American Death metal in Cannibal Corpse, who have not played a show in America in a very long time. Their new release is kicking ass so far. I fully expect that Cannibal Corpse is going to destroy on our tour. Beyond that, we have the biggest name in hardcore right now in Terror. The new Terror record is fucking amazing. We had to bring Terror back this year because they did so amazing on ½ of our tour last year. We felt like we owed it to them do get the entire tour. They are great people as well, which made it easier to have them back. The rest of the line-up is equally awesome. I think we nailed it this year.
What kind of sound system and stage set up will we expect this year?
Good question. I am an idiot when it comes to the technical stuff. I leave that to our production manager. However, I do know that we spend more money then we should to make sure kids leave our show feeling like the production was great.
What can we expect in the years to come from SOTU?
A great fucking time at a reasonable ticket price.
Any final thoughts on the tour?
Our Internet presales launched earlier this week and within the first couple of days, we sold 5 times as many tickets as we did during the same period last year. No bullshit here. This is obviously a very encouraging sign. I'd say, don't wait until the last minute to buy your tickets. This should be a very memorable tour and if you are fans of any of these bands, it makes sense to buy tickets while you can.
Thanks for supporting our tour. Look forward to hanging on the road!
Thanks again Paul.
